Lessons from Russian Marxism: From Secluded Activity to Parallel Propaganda and Agitation

July 29, 2026 - Abundio
Historical

Our communist movement faces an important question: considering the low level of our organizations, our continuous lack of practical and ideological unity, the scattered characteristic of our forces, etc., where must we dedicate our efforts? The answer of many organizations to this predicament is to focus on the theoretical development of those that are already predisposed to Marxism. This fundamentally results in prioritizing the organization of studies. Study formations, according to these groups, end up representing a microcosm of what a revolutionary organization would look like, meaning that the leaders of these groups will judge new communists based on their study discipline and note-taking abilities. This type of activity, prolonged to an indefinite amount of time, results in organizations that are fundamentally separated from any elements of the working class movement, organizations that are secluded and isolated. The leaders of these groups become so “theoretically advanced” that they now presume to have the correct path to achieving revolution, even before having any semblance of connection to an actual movement. The members of these groups look up to their leaders, try to be like them by getting deep into the classics of Marxism, and the struggle for the correct political line continues further among these small groups, who battle through the exchange of polemics and “novel” interpretations of Marxism.

Practically, we see the results of these decisions. Most workers don’t know what Maoism is, and if some do, they think of a caricature, one full of crazy pseudo-revolutionaries that romanticize illegal activity. Endless isolated studies, activity entirely detached from the masses, only allows such interpretations to prevail among the workers. However, the tendency to continue the primacy of study, to submerge organizations into this form of activity, has been justified by appealing to the history of the Russian Revolution, more specifically to the formation of study circles in the early period of the development of Marxism in Russia in the mid 1890s. This essay is an attempt to explain why such a reading is incorrect, and to instead utilize the experience of Russian Marxism to draw helpful lessons for our activity today. This requires leaving behind mechanical interpretations of history and turning towards an honest analysis of the most pressing contradictions of our movement.

The Activity of the Fathers of Russian Marxism

The beginning of Russian Marxism as a definitive trend can be traced back to the birth of the Emancipation of Labor Group in 1883, when a group of five, led by Plekhanov, Akselrod and Zasulich, joined in Geneva to form the group that would lead the struggle for the correct revolutionary position for Russia. This group of people consisted of revolutionaries, who due to their participation with the Narodnik groups in Tsarist Russia, were forced to flee the country. Plekhanov, considered by many to be the theoretical leader of the group, took up the study of Marxism while in exile from 1880 to 1882, fundamentally turning from the peasant socialist position of the Narodniks to that of Marxism, which put forward the principal role of the proletariat in waging revolution and overthrowing the Russian autocracy. Therefore, the initial activities of the Emancipation of Labor group were principally to wage a theoretical struggle against the Narodniks, who although largely unsuccessful in their attempts to unite with the masses of Russia, still held a large influence over the bourgeois intelligentsia. This constitutes the historical background of a complex history, that of the development of Marxism in Russia, but most importantly, that of the creation and growth of an actual revolutionary movement with the proletariat of Russia in mind. The first ten years of this process, 1883 to 1893, constitute a specifically obscure time in which the Emancipation of Labor Group and revolutionary groups in Russia faced two important tasks: positioning Marxism as the correct revolutionary framework among the sectors of the intelligentsia previously won over by Narodism, while at the same time discovering the optimal methods to popularize and advance Marxism among the Russian working class. Lenin describes this process in A Retrograde Trend in Russian Social Democracy:

The foundation of Russian Social-Democracy was the great service rendered by the Emancipation of Labour group, Plekhanov, Axelrod, and their friends. Since the foundation of Russian Social-Democracy (1883) the Russian working-class movement—in each of its broader manifestations—has been drawing closer to the Russian Social-Democrats in an effort to merge with them. The founding of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (in the spring of 1898) marked the biggest step forward towards this fusion.1

As we will describe later in detail, these tasks proved to be difficult, and the approach to tackling them ultimately resulted in a period that, in hindsight, appeared to be more passive, mostly developing theoretical work, focusing on small-scale propaganda work, and developing social-democratic forces without an emphasis on broader mass work.

A common argument among communist organizations today revolves around this history, claiming that there is a necessary study circle period prior to any involvement with broader worker agitation or any other form of mass work.2 Here, we will show why this argument is inconsistent with the historical development of the social democratic movement in Russia. Furthermore, we will show that this interpretation is mechanical in nature, failing to understand the fundamental contradictions of the socialist movement in Russia, and lazily attaching the historical proof as an excuse for secluded activity among the intelligentsia in a time in which fusion with the working class is practically nonexistent.3

Activity in the initial period of the Emancipation of Labor Group is almost entirely defined by the influential writings of Plekhanov, such as Socialism and the Political Struggle in 1883, Our Differences in 1884, and On the Development of the Monistic View of History in 1885. These writings were essential for the education of a section of the intelligentsia disillusioned with the practical results of the Narodnik attempts to revolution. They constituted a directed response to the Narodnik position on revolution, as well as a novel synthesis of the pillars of Marxism as Plekhanov interpreted throughout his study. In Our Differences, we begin to see very clearly what Plekhanov considered to be the most urgent tasks of a very young Marxist movement in Russia, tasks that were by no means exclusively focused on the role of theoretical development and formation of small circles of revolutionaries. The necessity of “merging with the workers” is questioned directly by Plekhanov:

We do not wish and would not be able to deceive anybody. Everybody knows how many difficulties and persecutions await the propagandist and popular agitator in our country today. But those difficulties must not be exaggerated. Every kind of revolutionary work without exception is made very difficult in our country today by persecution from the police, but that does not mean that the white terror has achieved its aim, i.e., that it has “rooted out sedition”. Action calls for counteraction, persecution gives birth to self-sacrifice, and no matter how energetic the reactionary steps taken by the government, the revolutionary will always be able to evade them if only he devotes the necessary amount of energy to that purpose.4

It is necessary to point out that Plekhanov describes the difficulty of the propagandist and the popular agitator, not devoting all attention to the role of the propagandist, which proved to be much more active in the years following this text. Nevertheless, the passage, and the text itself, focuses on the need to establish practical activity among the working class by any means possible. This was in contrast to the activity of the Narodniks which saw no benefit of propagandizing and agitating in relation to its potential costs. Therefore, at a moment in which the practical tasks of fusion with the working class had not been specifically defined, as this was impossible without a concrete plan for practical activities, Plekhanov, the leader of the Emancipation of Labor Group, did everything but preach for careful study and lack of agitation. Furthermore, his comments regarding the difficulties of propaganda and agitation must be analyzed from the perspective of the material conditions of Russia at the time. To not do this would be a severe mistake of historical analysis from a Marxist perspective.

Later in the text, Plekhanov provides more detail to the steps that a social-democratic movement would take in Russia. This is where we begin to see the elements which, if misread or overemphasized, motivate the lethargy of our movement in its initial activities.

Needless to say the workers’ secret societies do not constitute a workers’ party. In this sense, those who say that our programme is meant far more for the future than for the present are quite right. But what follows from that? Does it mean we need not set to work immediately on its implementation? The exceptionalists who argue in that way are again being caught in a vicious circle of conclusions. A widespread working-class movement presupposes at least a temporary triumph of free institutions in the country concerned, even if those institutions are only partly free. But to secure such institutions will in turn be impossible without political support from the most progressive sections of the people. Where is the way out? West European history broke this vicious circle by slow political education of the working class.5

In this case, the phrase “slow political education of the working class” could be confused with the necessity of a period in which propaganda among small circles of intellectuals is prioritized, progressively adding “proletarian elements” into these groups. We must ask if concluding such a thing from Plekhanov’s arguments could truly make any sense today, when we can attempt the political education of the working class with considerable ease compared to what the Emancipation of Labor Group had to endure. What does “slow political education of the working class” mean for our conditions? Why would such activity be devoid of any form of broad agitation, especially at a time when we don’t even have any sort of connection with the working-class movement? How are we to bring proletarian elements into our activities by fixating on the limits that we should set on our work, instead of accepting the relative benefits of our conditions and the potential for reach that we have in the present state of things. In Our Differences, Plekhanov is arguing for all possible activity that is in the benefit of forming a workers’ party in Russia. The necessity of fusion with the working class, of the creation of a party, of taking steps in that direction, must be what we take away from this text. From there, we can learn much more about the specifics of fusion, but at first, we must accept that even the fathers of Russian Marxism, those that had to face the dire situation of tsarist Russia, placed emphasis on joining the worker’s struggle early on in their theoretical writings. The “Going to the People” campaign of the Narodniks showed a lot of the potential mistakes when attempting to reach the masses, but instead of going to the other extreme, instead of emphasizing secluded and clandestine work, the Russian Marxists knew that joining the workers in the struggle had to be done as soon as possible. We can draw some conclusions for our practice today by looking at the content of the activity of the social-democrats prior to broad agitation, but we must not conflate the difficulty of this later period with what we face today in the United States, and we must not use this period as an excuse for our separation from the worker struggle.

In the document From the Publishers of the Workers’ Library, Plekhanov and Akselrod provided the reasoning behind their activity in much clearer terms:

The publication of pamphlets and booklets for the workers that the Emancipation of Labor Group has undertaken will be directed mainly at the more advanced strata among them, in other words, at the worker intelligentsia. Notwithstanding our desire to work for the creation of a literature that can be understood by the entire mass of peasants and workers, we are nevertheless compelled to restrict our popular literacy activity for the time being to a tight circle of more or less intelligent readers from amongst the working class. We are driven to this by our position far from our homeland and by the extremely small number of people upon whom we can at present rely to support such an undertaking. We hope that the true friends of the working classes among the Russian revolutionaries will not be slow to take serious steps to fulfill one of their most important obligations – the creation of a peasants’ and workers’ literature that can be understood by readers at various levels of intellectual development.6

Here, we see further proof of their limitations, as well as a clear understanding of what needs to be done to advance the socialist movement, the steps needed to form a workers’ party. The Emancipation of Labor Group’s detachment from the core of working class Russians informed their activity, but despite their lack of practical connection with the working masses, they still held a much more direct position regarding the need to fuse with the working class than the communists of today, who in their privileged position of larger access to the eyes of the working masses of the country, limit themselves to debate within their secluded theoretical circles. We find it difficult not to notice this obvious contradiction.

The Embryonic Connection of Russian Social Democrats to the Working Masses

Even though the Emancipation of Labor Group’s writings had a considerable influence among the revolutionary sectors of Russia, putting forward the need “to merge with the workers”, their connection to groups on the ground in Russia working with the masses was almost nonexistent. The group took up the responsibility of distributing literature around Russia, serving as a sort of printing press that would communicate with other groups to disseminate their works among the secret societies. Nevertheless, the group found itself isolated in terms of any other form of practical activity, only communicating with the intelligentsia and worker circles on limited and sporadic occasions. During the period of 1883-1893, there were few groups of intellectuals and advanced workers attempting to advance Marxist propaganda. One of them was the Blagoev group, which wrote to the Emancipation of Labor Group in 1884 to ask for literary materials. This group was one of many small Marxist circles incapable of maintaining activity, as they were raided out of existence by 1885-1886. This continued from 1885 to 1891, revealing that the current form of organization had proved insufficient to successfully establish a connected movement across Russia. In retrospect, many organizations will point to this period as one of theoretical development, of a necessary time to establish the utmost correct stance on everything Marxist prior to putting it into practice. However, history shows the opposite, displaying the constant push and pull of the intellectuals and worker societies attempting to form any sort of organized force, while the tsarist police took complete advantage of their amateur methods to quickly dismantle any semblance of revolutionary activity. Fortunately for us, the history of the Russian socialist movement does not stop at this juncture. Instead, the working conditions of a rapidly developing capitalism in Russia – conditions that our advanced capitalist nation by far exceeds – forced the well-meaning Russian Marxists out of their obscure position.

Even though the Emancipation of Labor Group had already made mention of the importance of agitation, things took a sharper turn in 1891. Then, Plekhanov wrote The Tasks of the Social Democrats in the Struggle Against the Famine in Russia, further defining the need to break out of the secluded activity of the circles to perform widespread agitation among the workers. He begins by expressing that “the promotion of the growth of the class consciousness of the proletariat is the sole purpose and the direct and sacred duty of the Socialists” and that this does not mean that “the socialists stand for propaganda, for propaganda alone, and for nothing but propaganda.” Plekhanov expands on the importance of agitation, which is “propaganda occasioned by events that are not entirely ordinary and that provoke a certain upsurge in the public mood.”7 To be even more direct, Plekhanov gives the following remark:

Consequently agitation is essential for any party that wishes to have historical meaning. A sect may be content with propaganda in the narrow sense of the word, but a political party never. (…) Consequently agitation is the aim of propaganda: I conduct propaganda so that I shall have the opportunity to transfer to agitation.8

It is clear that this quote would not pose an issue to those that claim that we are now in a “period of circles” if Plekhanov concluded all of this from the realization that the Russian Marxist forces were only just now ready to conduct agitational activity. There is, however, no such claim in this text, which instead points to a clear tenet of Marxism being put into revolutionary practice, that of parallel propaganda and agitation. Plekhanov does not reach this conclusion because the circle work had developed an organization that was capable of agitation; he reaches this conclusion despite the lack of organizational forces, as a result of the need to amplify the activity that had been advanced up to that point. Hence another reason why it is nonsensical to excuse our lack of connection to the working class from the experience of the Russian Marxists in their earlier period of activity. As soon as they noticed their lack of fusion, their own secluded characteristic, they attempted to connect with the working masses as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

The Early Worker Study Circles

Around the same time that Plekhanov wrote The Tasks of the Social Democrats in the Struggle Against the Famine in Russia, the establishment of worker study circles and secret societies became the trend of the Russian Marxist movement. These formations preceded the Russian Marxists, as they began to form in the 1870s with the influence of the Populists, but in many instances out of the initiative of the workers of Russia’s advanced industry themselves. Nevertheless, as Russian Marxism developed and provided an alternative to the terroristic tendencies of the Populists, Social Democrats began to participate and lead these circles of workers, mostly focusing on the realm of extensive study. The late 1880s and early 1890s provide many examples of such groups, which put together a curriculum for workers to learn various topics related to science, history, and socialism.9 One notable example is that of Brusnev, a Russian student from the Technological Institute whose group established contact with multiple worker circles in St. Petersburg at the end of the 1880s, advancing forms of propaganda that are best described in this curriculum:

  1. Reading, writing and thinking.
  2. Chemistry, physics, botany, zoology, physiology, anatomy, hygiene; briefly, geology, cosmography and astronomy. The differing theories of the formation of the earth and the origin of the universe.
  3. The theory of Darwin, the theory of the origin and development of organ isms and the origin of man.
  4. The history of culture. The period of savagery and the period of barbarism. The life of man in each of these periods (his food, pursuits, family, habits, laws, beliefs, property, social life and the full communism of the time) and the evolution of all this, the development and evolution of power, religion, morality, the family and property. The dependence of all aspects of human life on the economic situation. The period of civilisation. A similar, but more detailed, study of this period with the addition of the political history of ancient and modern peoples — and in this context the whole evolution of all aspects of the life of the Russian people — and especially Russian history. The history of science, philosophy, discoveries and inventions.
  5. Political economy. The history of the development of the forms of organising labour (slavery, feudalism, capitalism, the inevitable evolution of the latter in the direction of collectivism). The history of political economy.
  6. The position and history of the peasants in Russia and in the West. The commune, artel, allotments, foodstuffs and taxes. Banks — for the peasantry (and the nobility). Migration, schism and sectarianism.
  7. The position of the working class in Russia and the West. The history of the workers’ movement in the light of the theories of various reformers. Palliatives in the workers’ question (producers’ and consumers’ societies, etc.), factory legislation.
  8. The history of the social movement in Europe and, in the fullest and greatest detail, in Russia (NB). The contemporary position and significance of all the classes in Russia (the nobility, clergy, bourgeoisie, peasantry and the workers; the bureaucracy, army and the government).
  9. Economic policy and its history in the West and in Russia. The essence of socialism.
  10. The full, detailed, and precisely and definitely substantiated programme of minimum demands for the present time.10

In summary, these circles were meant to be schools of socialism, places in which workers were able to develop theoretically to potentially become leaders of the social-democratic movement. However, the content of the activity of these groups often superseded their socialist goals, mostly limiting their activity to the deep study of anything possible and an emphasis on intellectualizing the workers themselves. We can see how this activity could have profound results in developing workers to become socialist leaders considering the conditions of autocratic Russia, in which workers had almost no access to any form of education. Furthermore, the history of revolutionary movements in Russia was heavily tied to a relationship of service from the intelligentsia towards the workers, one that dates to the initial years of Russian populism. Workers had a desire to learn, and they saw the intelligentsia as the group that would aid them in fulfilling this goal. The Social Democrats entered the arena of the study circles incapable of ignoring this history, participating in a fashion that cannot be separated from the customs of the populist intelligentsia and its relations to the masses.

Today, we must ask ourselves what we have to offer to the workers, what our potential service to them could be, and what we can contribute to their struggle. It would be quite naïve to ignore the fact that workers today have access to tremendous amounts of resources. They, in contrast to the workers of Tsarist Russia, don’t need a group of revolutionary students to provide them with basic education and skills that would facilitate their lives. Today’s US workers are vastly different, but at the same time there is a shared characteristic between these two sets of workers from sharply distinct times, that of the impotence regarding struggling against capitalist exploitation and oppression, that of not having found the strategy and methodology to form a truly strong organization capable of waging the economic and political struggle in this country, that of lacking concrete class consciousness. Therefore, communists of today cannot become content with only garnering deep intellectual knowledge. Instead, they must dig deeper, search more broadly, and find in their activity the gaps that separate them from the workers’ struggle. Today’s communists must recognize that they have shown to be fundamentally incapable of helping the workers struggle in practice, and that they will only listen and pay attention once we have, at the very least, recognized this fundamental issue.

By 1893, the limitations of the study circle formations became a common observation by many Social Democrats. For the purpose of revolution, the “propaganda among the circles” strategy proved to have a counterproductive result among groups of workers which began to see the class struggle as something beneath them, as something to do later once the workers were “very” theoretically developed, and as an activity that must be done only among the advanced workers. Accounts of the activity of the study circles (also known as kruzhki) tell us a lot about the concrete issues that emanated from the activity of these organizations. Martov, at a time in which he worked closely with Lenin on the side of the proletariat, described his analysis of what the worker intelligentsia was developing into as it progressed in its intellectual endeavors:

The [main] trouble was that, given this outlook, they viewed the entire process of the future rise of their class in [an] oversimplified rationalistic manner: They thought it would occur from the spread of the knowledge and those new moral concepts which they themselves had acquired in the circles and from reading. Arguments with them lead us to the astounding discovery that their whole manner of social thinking was idealistic, that their socialism was still thoroughly abstract and utopian, and that the idea of employing the class struggle to transform the uncultured environment itself, in protest against which their own social awakening had occurred was still entirely alien to them.11

When attempts to further the activity of the circles to broader agitation were posited by the leaders of these study circles, many of the “advanced workers” strongly resisted them, claiming that the intelligentsia should devote itself unselfishly to the enlightenment of the workers, not using them as cannon fodder for their agitational endeavors, and continuing to turn workers into “well-rounded” Marxists. Most surprisingly, many of the graduates of the kruzhki decided to set up their own shops after saving sufficient amounts of capital during their time studying with the circles. This development proved to the Social Democrats – particularly those from Vilna – that the worker study circle formulation had to be altered, and that new activity was necessary.12

In St. Petersburg, similar conclusions were being reached by those participating in study circle activity. Up to that point (around 1893) there was a general consensus on the activity that Social Democrats must go into based on the development of capitalism in Russia and the conclusion that the work was always determined by the particular “phase of development” of the movement. From this followed the idea that there was a stage of development in which propaganda among the advanced workers was the primary activity, that activity which matched the conditions of capitalism in Russia and the autocratic state. However, this suddenly stopped seeming to be the correct stance, as things were becoming ever more stagnant. Krupskaya’s memoirs give us a glimpse into what the Social Democrats were thinking:

A definite trend had begun to crystallize among St. Petersburg Marxist study-circles at that time. The gist of it was this: the processes of social development appeared to the representatives of this trend as something mechanical and schematic. Such an interpretation of social development dismissed completely the role of the masses, the role of the proletariat. Marxism was stripped of its revolutionary dialectics, and only the bare “phases of development” remained.13

Here, we see how the dogmatism of these rigid stages begins to be understood by the St. Petersburg Social Democrats. This did not result from an abstract theoretical development, one that would come from continuous study, but instead out of a practical conclusion, one that came about through the definite, although limited, results from attempting fusion with the working class by propagandizing among the working class intelligentsia.

What came out of a conclusion from practical evidence? New ideas of what to do next, of how to advance the activity that was done up to that point. Lenin, already involved in the St. Petersburg circles, became active in the discussions of what this was going to look like:

The question came up as to what ways we should take. Somehow general agreement was lacking. Someone (I believe it was Shevlyagin) said that work on the Illiteracy Committee was of great importance. Vladimir Ilyich laughed, and his laughter sounded rather harsh (I never heard him laugh that way again). “Well, if anyone wants to save the country by working In the Illiteracy Committee,” he said, “let him go ahead.”14

In the various pockets of the movement, from Vilna to St. Petersburg, circle work had become stale. It was not out of a concrete development of the forces developed by these circles that new activity was pushed forward. It was, instead, a realization of the mistakes made to that point.

If the worker intelligentsia had developed through these groups, it was largely at risk of turning into anything but a revolutionary section of the working class, as the emphasis on study for study’s sake placed a separation between these advanced workers and the large masses of workers that needed to be agitated for the movement to become meaningful at a national level. To not understand this characteristic of the “advanced workers” that were developing through the historically common study circle in Russia would be a severe mistake for today’s communist movement, as we cannot follow every single step of the road to the October Revolution simply because the revolution was ultimately successful. This would constitute a mechanical interpretation of history, one that is fundamentally opposed to historical materialism and the dialectical method which exists at its core. Obviously, mistakes were made along the way to victory, and we believe that it is correct to say that the prioritization of isolated intellectual study circles among the intelligentsia and advanced workers for a large period of time in the Social Democratic movement is one of them, one that we can avoid today only because of the valiant attempts of those revolutionaries to create a socialist party in conditions as complex and difficult as those of Tsarist Russia.

Towards Broad Agitation: Lessons from the League of Struggle

Already in 1892, Akselrod had put forward what he considered the necessary step for the working-class intelligentsia which had developed through the worker study circles, that activity which would evolve their role from a parochial one to an influential and revolutionary one for the entire working class of Russia:

The final consequence of the activity of our worker intelligentsia along the path indicated will be the fact that all sincere and conscious revolutionary socialists, whatever their name or provenance, will join a general workers’ unions: instead of the present workers’ circles, every one of which acts on behalf of the people and in the name of the people, a single Socialist Workers’ party will be formed and its members will be “all true friends of the laboring classes in the population.15

Although Akselrod’s general position was correct, that of needing to move forward to the formation of one national organization that could represent the entire Russian working class, he lacked the practical information to present concrete steps towards the realization of this goal. Those that participated directly in the struggle, those that continuously attempted to fuse with the workers and failed to do so for almost a decade, began to propose new avenues. Here, we concretely see the influence of Lenin and Martov, who, coming from very distinct backgrounds and previous activities, in their own ways pushed forward the necessity to engage in broader agitation among the working masses. They both understood the need to train the organizations of advanced workers and the intelligentsia to become more than just intellectuals, but successful agitators who could communicate the necessity of the revolution to the masses that had, up to that point, mostly rejected them.

When analyzing the history of Russian Marxism, there is a common tendency to put exclusive attention towards the activities of Lenin, wherever he was working. Done correctly, this is extremely helpful, as we can learn tremendously from his experience and leadership. At its worst, it becomes a dogmatic overemphasis on snippets of history, forgetting that revolutionary history is not the history of one person’s contributions. Krupskaya’s memoirs are an exceptional example of this, at the same time displaying the incredible capabilities of Lenin as a leader of the movement and giving this its corresponding historical context in which other people and organizations helped shape the success of social democracy among the working class. Krupskaya described how Lenin engaged with the workers in the worker study circles, showcasing an embryonic form of what factory agitation would mean for the St. Petersburg social democrats:

Quite a number of the workers who attended Vladimir Ilyich’s circles were pupils of my Sunday School, among them Babushkin, Borovkov, Gribakin, the Bodrovs (Arseny and Philip) and Zhukov. In those days the Sunday Evening School offered an excellent opportunity for studying everyday working-class life, labour conditions and the temper of the masses. The Smolenskaya School had six hundred pupils, not counting the evening technical classes and the Women’s and Obukhov schools attached to it. (…) Vladimir Ilyich was interested in every little detail that could help him to piece together a picture of the life and conditions of the workers, to find some sort of avenue of approach to them in the matter of revolutionary propaganda. Most of the intellectuals those days did not know the workers well. An intellectual would come to one of the study circles and read the workers a kind of lecture.16

This shows the effect that Lenin’s participation had on the relationship between social democrats and the workers. He quickly demonstrated a sharp interest in the lives of workers, understanding that a socialist’s understanding of the potentials for revolution is limited insofar as they are separated from the workers’ experiences. Even though he could obtain much information in this way, he did not stubbornly avoid any changes of activity. In contrast, once the On Agitation pamphlet came from Vilna, Lenin and the other St. Petersburg Social Democrats did not engage with it from a sectarian attitude. Krupskaya says that when the hectographed pamphlet arrived in 1896, “the soil had been fully prepared for agitation by leaflets. The thing was to make a start. The method of agitation based on the workers’ everyday needs struck deep root in our Party work.”17

On Agitation provided a sharp critique of the secluded methods of Social Democracy prior to the turn to broader agitation. Kremer and Martov believed that it was time to stop training worker intellectuals in the realm of theoretical knowledge and instead focused on overcoming the alienation of the study circles with the masses. “The broad masses are drawn into the struggle, not by intellectual considerations, but by the objective course of events.”18 The conclusion from this was the necessity of training the advanced workers to become sharp agitators. This meant less emphasis on granular theoretical work and more emphasis on understanding the most up to date conditions of factory life, the grievances of workers, the incidents that caught the working masses’ attention, etc. In summary, “the task of Social Democrats is one of constant agitation among factory workers on the basis of their everyday needs and demands.”19

Today’s communists will most likely look at this and point to its mistake because of the connection of economic agitation with the economist trend, which Lenin famously attacked in his classic What is to be Done? The mistake here is to not understand the time and context of such a critique. Lenin understood the need of broader agitation at a time in which the principal contradiction of the social democratic movement in Russia was that of the separation between the social democrats and the working masses. Having spent a lot of time and effort polemicizing the position of the populists before On Agitation was distributed, Lenin did not hesitate to shift focus when he saw the stagnation of circle work. Accounts describe the reluctancy of many in Lenin’s group, including Babushkin:

I absolutely rebelled against agitation, though I saw the undoubted fruits of this work in the general upsurge of enthusiasm among the working masses; for I was very much afraid of another such wave of arrests and thought that now all would perish. However, I was proved to be mistaken.20

Nevertheless, agitation proved to be the correct step, as it successfully furthered the connection between the social democrats and the working masses, resulting in the strike wave of textile workers in 1896 which was led principally by the League of Struggle, a formation that was only possible by opening up the struggle to a broader basis and moving away from isolated circle work. Economism, which constitutes the exaggeration of economic agitation, the overemphasis of this aspect in substitution of the also essential element of political and ideological work among the masses, became an important issue. But it was the task of those social democrats, advanced workers, and working masses who had conclusively taken the stand of Marxism to struggle against this trend, solidifying the social democratic movement and the potential for revolution in Russia. Economism was, in a way, a problem that came from a correct step, one that had to be overcorrected from. Such is the process of correctly approaching revolution, one that is scientific because it understands the flow of events in history dialectically, by looking at the contradictions of a process and understanding that, as soon as a principal contradiction is resolved, another one will appear which must be dealt with. This process is anything but dogmatic or mechanical, often involving a repeated engagement with trial and error.

We agree with Martov in his conclusion from On Agitation:

For this reason we identify with neither of the extremes, neither losing touch with the practical basis and only studying, nor agitating among the mass, without at the same time concerning ourselves with theory. Only parallel activity, the complementing of the one by the other, provides a real preparation and produces solid convictions.21

Today, we face the need to go into this parallel activity. We know we are lacking in theoretical development. We must always continue to challenge ourselves in this regard. However, we are much more lacking in any form of connection with the working masses. We don’t know them, they don’t know us, and we have provided no reason to be taken seriously by them. To not overcomplicate ourselves, to look at our conditions honestly and with humility, is to take a page out of the Russian Marxist experience, not by blindly following their steps, but by courageously accepting our mistakes and taking a different path. We are attempting to do this by dedicating effort into connecting honestly with logistics workers in our locality, effectively deciding to not place study as our primary activity, and we hope that other groups around the country decide to do the same. Even if this constitutes a small and humble step, we believe it is one taken in the right direction, in the direction of revolution.

  1. Lenin, A Retrograde Trend in Russian Social Democracy, 1899.
  2. Mt. Tai Study Circle, When Americans Refuse to Read: The Task of Study Today, 2025
  3. This work focuses on the historical interpretation of earlier Russian Marxism. Further analysis of the theoretical and practical mistakes of the organizations arguing for a necessary study circle period can be found in Concerning the Rationalist Trend in American Maoism, an article by L. Kynes of the Maoist Labor Group of Austin.
  4. Plekhanov, Our Differences, 1883.
  5. Ibid.
  6. Plekhanov and Akselrod, From the Publishers of the Workers Library, 1884.
  7. Plekhanov, The Tasks of the Social Democrats in the Struggle Against the Famine in Russia, 1891.
  8. Ibid.
  9. Pipes, Social Democracy and the St. Petersburg Labor Movement: 1885-1897, 1963.
  10. Brusnev, Manuscripts Programme for Studies with the Workers, 1892.
  11. Cliff, Building the Party: 1893-1914, 1975.
  12. Wildman, The Making of a Worker’s Revolution, 1967.
  13. Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin, 1926.
  14. Ibid.
  15. Akselrod, The Tasks of the Worker Intelligentsia in Russia, 1891.
  16. Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin, 1926.
  17. Ibid
  18. Kremer, On Agitation, 1893.
  19. Ibid.
  20. Babushkin, Recollections of Ivan Babushkin, 1893-1900 (translation from Wildman, The Making of a Worker’s Revolution, 1967).
  21. Kremer, On Agitation, 1893.
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